


Silent

by Coleoptile



Category: Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, The Protomen
Genre: robot suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 20:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7772515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coleoptile/pseuds/Coleoptile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wily's Assassin has a mission that doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent

****

Tonight hadn’t gone as planned. Being defeated wasn’t something the assassin could do. Retreating wasn’t something the assassin could do. His programming wouldn’t allow it, so even damaged, scrambling through suburban ruins, and low on energy, his processors were running through every possible option to return to the scene and eliminate the threat as quietly as possible. He had to get hidden and get back any advantage. Even though they were just humans, the assassin couldn’t take on this crowd alone.

Sprinting, the assassin saw an old steel fence, standing between him and some respite from the mob. He dashed to get through it, only to have the fence tug back violently at his neck. He squirmed wildly for a moment and his helmet came away, allowing him through. Leaving the helmet behind, he dropped onto the abandoned railway, and took shelter below the platform, the sound of angry human feet drawing closer.

“Did you see where it went??”  
“Course I didn’t see, it’s pitch black out here!”  
“It dropped it’s helmet, maybe we could-“  
“Ah! God! I ain’t finding a whole new base just ‘cause some mining robot ratted us out!”  
“Keep quiet will ya!” a silence waved over the group. “We busted that thing up pretty good. It ain’t rattin’ on us any time soon.”  
A murmur of reluctant agreement briefly cut the silence, followed by gentle crunching of feet against the cold ground growing further away.

The robot was now left in silent darkness. Sat still, with tares in his clothes, various punctures and dents, and without his helmet, the assassin now realised just how cold the night was. Hauling himself onto the old platform, his hand almost slipped on something cold. Snow. Of course it was snowing. Just what he needed. Scrambling round near the fence, he failed to find his helmet. Those damn terrorists had stolen it! His processors were reacting poorly to the drop in temperature, but his programming forced him to press forward until they were eliminated.

He decided to tail the group. A simple solution was all he could do at this point, but with hearing far better than a human’s he could easily hear their footsteps through the shallow snow. This area of town was so ghostly. There had been little-to-no development since the old days, the outdated rails no longer run, derelict buildings littering the place, no robots to keep it clean, no lamps to keep it lit, no telescreenes to keep it safe. This kind of environment lead to rises of groups like those violent humans. The people further in the city lived in luxury and peace, difficult tasks done by robots, crime-rates kept low, and delicate humans kept safe. Groups like this wanted to ruin that.  
The assassin gave no effort to try and understand that. His job was to get rid of groups like that and protect this utopia his master created.

The sound of footsteps stopped.  
The assassin stopped in turn and ducked into an allyway.  
No more sound came. How could they stand still for so long in this temperature?  
The snow kept falling and resting on the assassin’s nose, no body heat to melt it. Surely the humans would have to be moving in conditions like this. As he wiped the snow from his face, something close enough to dread ran though his circuits: his jacket sleeve was also silent. The human’s hadn’t stopped moving, he just plain couldn’t hear them. And all this time he’d just been standing around letting those terrorists get away.

Too dark to see.  
Too damaged to hear.  
He had to find them.  
He had to kill them.

Light. Light, he had to find some light. Oh, god, was this what humans called dizziness? Nothing was working. Input devices were either beaten, frozen or soaked, and any processors were a mess. His only chance now was stumbling towards street-lights. They seemed impossibly far away, and the assassin found himself wishing more terrorists stayed in the nice parts of This City.  
What would even happen if he couldn’t kill them or even get back to his master? He was sure a new robot would be sent out. Hopefully one that could do a better job than he did.  
The robot dropped to his knees. He was now close enough to the lights of the city that the snow just further than his own nose was visible. The snow was starting to weigh on his back and shoulders, so he forced himself up, letting the snow roll off. His soaked clothes were now sticking to his frame and freezing. There was absolutely no way he could take on a single human in this state, and a report would do the city far more good than allowing himself to get destroyed by violence or weather.

When the assassin was finally mere meters from a lamp-post, now reaching a safer looking street. It was still under-developed, but it was slightly better lit, and one sole telescreen hung on one three-story building.  Standing in the middle of the dim road, he looked up at the screen, gazing hopelessly at the soundless images of his master, while he fumbled with his jacket, zipping it up and shoving his hands in the pockets.

Suddenly a rectangle of yellow light appeared in the snow. The robot drew his eyes along the shape to an open door, filled by an older woman gesturing towards herself with her hand. He trudged towards the woman, who put her hand on his back as he entered the building. She was a lot bigger than him, as most humans were, but it somehow made him feel a bit safer. After she closed the door, the assassin watched as her mouth moved and then fell into a frown.

Ah.

“My hearing is damaged.”

The woman’s face gave a sympathetic look, then gestured to the glasses around her neck while her lips moved wordlessly. That made sense. He probably looked like a human child to someone with poor eyesight.

His own sight was phasing in and out of various degrees of usefulness, as the old woman helped him out of his soaked clothes and covered his frozen frame in towels and blankets. He no longer thought of his master and terrorists, nor had he any sensation in his body, but he was sure it was warm, bright, and silent.

**Author's Note:**

> This is working off my personal headcanon that there was more than one assassin and as re-purposed mining robots, they're pretty disposable.


End file.
